By ; A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA

The foreign servile Ranil Wickremesinghe has acknowledged in an
interview with Susan Ormisten of the CBC News when he was asked as to why, as
prime minister, he did not known about repeated serious warnings, he has accepted accountability and said: My being
aware is separate from the fact that the security system had failed to
implement it — some of them didn’t take it seriously (his usual habit of evading responsibility and blaming others) and
has shamelessly said that government machinery was faulty and warnings from
intelligence agencies were not implemented before the Easter Sunday attacks

Wickremesinghe said that for the next few days or weeks, he
worries most is that one of those individuals may not turn up in
surveillance inquiries or isn’t detained before acting independently may commit
suicide by blasting himself in public.
(an absurf statement and a deliberate attempt to incriminate the dedicated
security services personnel who are carrying out a dedicated service round the
clock under immense threat to their own life.
Where on earth, the terrorist suspects or potential terrorist
voluntarily turns up to get himself subjected to surveillance? It is shame to
find this kind of an imbecile functioning as the Prime Minister of our
country)”

The interviewer said that Sri Lankan security officials warned
lawmakers on 4th April almost two weeks before the attacks and asked
why these warnings were ignored by the government and kept only the Christians
of the government inform therebypreventing them getting caught in the carnage?
Evading direct response to the question, Mr. Wickremasinghe said that in future
they have to put into effective measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again,
that information comes to be acted upon.”

But pressed as to why, as prime
minister, he did not know about repeated serious warnings, he accepted
accountability and acknowledge the fact
that the government machinery was faulty.

”Sri Lankan Archbishop Cardinal Dr.Malcolm Ranjith criticized top
leaders in government for feuding during the crisis. He said that at a time
when the whole country has been affected by a major catastrophe, politicians
should stop finding fault with each other.

The economic impact of the attacks could cripple the tourism industry
— at least for awhile.Sri Lanka’s Tourism Bureau has warned that tourist
arrivals in Colombo could drop by 50 per cent over the next two months, and with
30 per cent fewer travellers predicted according to chairman Kishu Gomes

But the prime minister who has ruined the economy of the country for
the last 4 years, despite claims made by him and his butterfly cabal (including
those holding commercially acquired Doctorates) that he is an economic wizard, predicted a
smaller impact in the long-term. In another bluffing he claimed that Sri Lanka
is in its low tourist season now. If
that was true why he ans his butterflies claimed two weeks before that there is
a steep increase in high end tourist arrivals?.

In a photograph published by the CBC News damage from the blast
surrounding a statue of St. Jude at St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo has
killed ore than 100 around this statue.

It is shameful and disgusting to note that this sadist
Prime Minister has said that there was no significant community backlash
causing more violence in the critical first three days after the attacks. It
may be one of the reasoms that he was hiding for those three days like his
uncle after black July. Uttering another blatant lie he has said
that it was terrible when the civil war (it
was not a civil war but over three decades of terrorist aggression, shamrlessly
attempting to distort the truth for which he has gained notoriety) ended in
2009. It seems that this idiotic Prime
Minister edo not know what happened in the country after our gallant soldiers
vanquished the terrorists. 19TH
May 2009 was the Deepavali of Sri Lanka in which people of the country devoid
of party, colour, religious, and ethnic differences celebrated distributing sweets
and kiribath, holding motor vehicle parades and many expressing their gratitude
to Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa for ending terrorism by prostrating before him. He was almost considered as a diety by the
people with the song of Maharajanani played in full blast in the background.

Renember Mr. Wickremasinghe that you will never achieve a
status like this even if you rule the country for the next 100 yearsand you
will only be considered as DDon Juan Dharmapala.

While Ranil Wickremasinghe shamelesslt claim that our intelligence is
not capable of dealing with what he calls the globalterrorism and the country
needs international spies to face the current situation the former President
and the Leader of the Opposition Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa has thanked India for the
help in uncovering the extremist plot but has said that Sri Lanka does not want any foreign
forces, like the Indian National Security Guard, on its soil.

“India has been helpful. But there is no need for the NSG to come in. We
don’t need foreign soldiers. Our forces are capable enough… We just need to
give them powers and freedom,” he has told News18 in an exclusive
interview.

His reaction came after a government official told CNN-News18 that the
elite force has been kept on standby if the island nation needed any
help.

The former president, who was involved in a soft coup attempt last year,
blasted the government and said both President Maithripala Sirisena, who is
also the minister of defense and in charge of national police, and Prime
Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been kept out of high-level security
meetings since Sirisena tried to oust him last fall, were responsible for the
series of blasts in which over 300 people were killed on Easter Sunday.

“They are busy playing politics at the cost of national security. Everyone
knew about the growth of radicalism. They were worried about votes and their
vote bank and did not act,” Rajapaksa told News18.

News 18 saif that Elections to pick a new president are due between October and
December and Rajapaksa has started targeting Sirisena and his Wickremesinghe
for failing to preserve the hard-fought peace that he helped to bring by
crushing the Tamil Tiger separatists. Although Rajapaksa cannot contest for
president again, his brother Gotabaya is ready to make a bid, his aide has
said.

India has said that it had shared very specific intelligence inputs about the
Islamic State’s plans of the bombings, but the warnings had remained
unheeded.

Top officials have acknowledged that some of the intelligence units were given
advance notice about the attacks — starting weeks ago and up until the morning
of the bombings — but that little was done to prevent them.

N 18 ai that the country’s police chief
Pujith Jayasundara and defense secretary Hemasiri Fernando have both have been
asked to resign over their failure to prevent the blasts despite having prior
intelligence.

In a tweet, PM Wickremesinghe said, “We take collective
responsibility and apologize to our fellow citizens for our failure to protect
victims of these tragic events.”

Mr. Rajapaksa also dismissed the PM’s view that no
action could be taken against citizens who had left to join the Islamic State.
“The existing laws are good enough to act against those with terror
links,” he argued.

PM Wickremesinghe said that the government had known that Sri Lankan
nationals who had joined the Islamic State had returned to the country, but
they could not be arrested as joining a foreign terrorist organization is not
against the law.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Easter terror
attacks on three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels that claimed over
300 lives but the government has blamed a local Islamist extremist group
National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ) for the bombings.

A report published by tr Island said that Archbishop of Colombo Dr.Malcolm
Cardinal Ranjith has told the government, in no uncertain terms, that he is
utterly displeased with the security measures adopted since the Easter Sunday
attacks. He has urged the government to ensure that the armed forces and police
went beyond merely acting on tip-offs. He has struck a responsive chord with
the public.

The Island said rhat one cannot but endorse the prelate’s call for the
government to pull all stops to remove the scourge of terror. Schools and
places of worship cannot remain closed for fear of terror attacks an it is the
bounden duty of the government to ensure public safety. The country was not
crippled in this manner even during the height of war. It is in this predicament
because national security did not figure high on the yahapalana agenda. Shaken
awake by the Easter Sunday bombings, the government is now running around like
a headless chicken. The police and the armed forces have been allowed to do
what they should have been ordered to carry out long before the Easter tragedy.

IGP Pujitha Jayasundara has been sent on compulsory leave over the
Easter Sunday incidents which the police failed to prevent in spite of
intelligence warnings. Secretary of Defence Hemasiri Fernando was made to
resign within a few days of the bombings.

Terrorists only have to be lucky once, and their targets have to be
lucky always, as the IRA told Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed
to kill her. This country suffered a countless number of terror attacks, for
nearly three decades, many in the city and its suburbs, while Prabhakaran was
around. Thousands of people perished in them. Terrorists killed one President,
in 1993, and another came very close to being blown to smithereens, six years
later. The Army Headquarters was bombed and the then Army Commander Lt. Gen.
Sarath Fonseka seriously injured. But the Easter Sunday blasts were different
in that they could have been averted as the government had been sufficiently
warned.

The Islabd report askrf is it only the IGP and the Defence Secretary who
should take the blame for security lapse and queried what about the political
grandees who did not care to take any action though it was brought to their
notice, in Parliament, way back in 2016, that several Sri Lankan families,
trained by the ISIS had returned home? When the then Justice Minister Dr.
Wijeyadasa Rajapakse made that revelation, he drew heavy flak from the
government MPs themselves, .

The President and the PM claim they were not aware of the pre-Easter
intelligence warning. So does Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa. Try as they
might, they won’t be able to dupe the public into taking their claims
seriously. The intelligence document, containing the warning, at issue, had been
copied to all VVIP security divisions as a leaked image thereof shows. Some
members of the Cabinet have admitted they had been aware of the danger well in
advance. Are we to conclude that the President, the PM and the Opposition
Leader are less informed than others the report asked. It pointed out that the PM has claimed that there are no laws to deal
with Sri Lankans who have joined foreign terrorist groups. Some legal experts
have pooh-poohed this claim, arguing that the existing laws are sufficient for
action to be taken against them. Even if there had been a lacuna in the
country’s laws, remedial measures should have been adopted as a national
priority to arrest the terror suspects concerned. New laws could have been
passed immediately.

The reports also pointed out that the 19th Amendment was passed in
record time at the behest of the UNP. The FCID (Financial Crimes Investigation
Division) was set up almost overnight to deal with the rivals of the yahapalana
government, which dragged its feet on matters concerning national security and
said that Cardinal Ranjith has proved that he is a much better leader than the
self-proclaimed ones who are making a lot of noise in politics. In the
immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, he intervened to defuse tension and
ensure that the public acted with restraint despite the sheer magnitude of the
disaster. He was, of course, assisted by other religious leaders in the noble
task.

The Island emphasized let the government be urged to heed the Cardinal’s
warning that the people’s patience is wearing thin and their anger might spill
over into the streets unless the situation is brought under control and the
remaining terrorists brought to justice forthwith.

below is a translation of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) proposals
submitted by Mr. Mahinhxda Rajapaksa at the All Party Conference inParliamrnt
on 25th April. (courtesy Lanka CNews)

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) extend our gratitude for calling
an all party conference to discuss the situation that has arisen following the
terrorists on the Easter Sunday and for inviting our party to attend this
conference. We hereby submit our proposals relating to the terrorist attacks,
the situation that led to these attacks, the after effects of the attacks, about
the steps that need to be taken to ensure and strengthen national security and
reconciliation among all communities while expressing our whole hearted
readiness to extend our unhesitant and fullest cooperation for the future
measures.

Our vision as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP)

It is our sole expectation to build the modern Sri Lankan nation in which all Sinhala,
Tamil, Muslin, Malay and Burgher could communities could live freely and
harmoniously upholding theit cultural identity and with religious and ethnic
freedom and reconciliation. All other rights in the human society come only
after the right to live. Therefore there can be nothing above the national
security. It is only within a secured society that all matters relating to ethnic
cooperation and religious reconciliation that take place. The reconciliation
remains within the common factor of national security.

But in the recent past an attitude showinh that there is a contradiction
between national security and national reconciliation, socialized from top to
bottom. This attitude showed the opinion that showing interest on national
security is tantamount togo against national reconciliation.

It is like an unscientific expression saying that breathing is injurious
to the heart. This condition knowingly or unknowingly and directly or
indirectedly contributed to this massive tragedy.

What we urge for is to place the national security in its due place. To
give its due place to the national security. To entrust the task of managing
the national security to
qualified professionals.

We did observe a sever collapse in the National Security Council and the
in the institutions in charge of national security. Immediately restructure these institutions on
a scientific basis.

It is a well known fact that the State Intelligence services are being
subjected to abhorrent suppression. Due
to this factor the State Intelligence services have become ineffective.

We emphatically request to immediately understand the importance of a
State Intelligence service for the prevalence of a State and activate the State
Intelligence service which has been inactivated.

It is only after proper scientific filtering that information collected
becomes usable data

It is not gossips that data collected by a State Intelligence
service.. When we analyse the recent
events it becomes clear that State Intelligence data has not even received the
importance given to a normal goddip.

There is no use of obtaining medicine if you do not consume it. It is the prime responsibility of those who
are in charge to utilize the State Intelligence properly.

The government should immediately analyse on steps to be taken er a
national disaster.In this instance civil and leaders and the general public
displayed a verty progressive behaviour. They were very much ahead of the
responsible authorities.

At this moment as there is a possibility of creating hatred on Sei Lanka
Muslims and a conspiracy to shatter national unity as it was done after Black
July it is the bounden duty and responsibility of the government to enhaance
security for all communities

We respectfully bow down our heads in gratitude to the neighbours who
rushed to assisy and help the victims, the staff of hospitals, officers of the
security forces, to all disaster management services . and to the public who
came forwatd to provide material and physical help d assistance.

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